Who Looks Like a U.S. Citizen?

“Where are you from?” And then, almost always the follow up: “Where are you really from?

Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

My partner gets asked these questions often—especially by white people. Yes, he speaks with an accent. But this isn’t actually about what someone sounds or looks like. It’s about whiteness. And who is assumed to belong here without explanation, and who is not.

No matter where my partner was born or raised, in the U.S. he is seen first as a black man.. And that matters. Whiteness has demanded and trained us to treat blackness and brownness as signals of outsiderness. So questions like these aren’t just curiosity. They carry meaning.

Many white folks, myself included, were taught not to name that meaning. We were taught that white people simply are from here. We seldom have to justify our presence. Our citizenship is mostly assumed. For black and brown people, belonging is often conditional, something that must be explained or proven.

When white people ask my partner where he’s from, the message underneath is clear: You don’t quite fit. He’s expected to account for himself in a way I never am.

For a long time, I told myself I was overthinking it. That my worry about his accent, his black skin, or the fact that we spend most of our time in mostly black and brown neighborhoods was just anxiety talking. But that story doesn’t hold anymore. It hasn’t for a while now—I’ve seen too much. And the country keeps proving that these fears are not imagined.

Based on a Supreme Court decision back in October 2025 and current enforcement practices, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is allowed to make investigative stops using appearance and context rather than clear evidence. Factors can include where someone is, the kind of work they appear to do, whether they speak with an accent, and how their race or ethnicity is perceived.

Read that again. Location. Accent. Perceived race.

In a neighborhood and a city like ours—where ICE has already taken people—those details aren’t abstract. They line up closely with my partner’s body, his voice, and our everyday routines. What once felt like private fear now feels backed by law. The things that make him him aren’t just visible anymore. They are treated as suspicious.

Just this week, ICE has been active again in Chicago, where we live. So the question Where are you from? sits heavy with me. It doesn’t feel inconsequential. It feels connected to something much bigger.

And it’s not just my partner. My kids are getting taller, looking older than they are. Their brown skin and features make them visible too. We are a family of U.S. citizens, yet we live with the fear that our government agencies will look at their bodies and assume they don’t belong here.

I have a sense of what some people might say next—mostly because I’ve heard it said: White people get deported too. That response misses the point for me. This is still about whiteness and who is treated as a citizen by default.

The government’s own language makes that clear. When the Department of Homeland Security has used the term ““remigrate”” in messaging about self-deportation, it’s not neutral. Words carry history. And if DHS wanted a different meaning, it could choose a different word.

In Europe, “remigration” has a well-documented history. It’s been used by far-white nationalist and ultranationalist movements to call for the removal of people who are not considered white, in the name of preserving a white national identity. Scholars and journalists have documented this clearly. As USC professor Nicholas J. Cull told Time, the term has become part of the everyday language of white supremacy.

So again, this isn’t just about immigration policy. It’s about drawing racial lines around safety and belonging. It’s about protecting whiteness as the standard for who gets to stay, who gets to feel secure, and who is treated as a U.S. citizen without much question.

Some people insist that Where are you from? is simply innocent curiosity. A way to connect. That may be how it feels to the person asking.

But that is not how the question lands for my partner or our family. And that reaction isn’t about personal sensitivity—it’s grounded in history, law, and lived reality. It reflects a long-standing refusal to fully accept that people of color can belong here without explanation.

I’m not sharing this to shame anyone or police language. I’m sharing it because language can reveal stories we’ve been taught to ignore. I’m sharing it because it’s my life. And because these moments tell us something important about whiteness.

Citizenship in the U.S. has never been race-neutral. From the start, the law made whiteness the standard. The first naturalization law in 1790 limited citizenship to “free white persons.” For generations, courts and lawmakers reinforced the idea that to be a U.S. citizen was to be white—through decisions like Dred Scott, exclusion laws targeting Chinese immigrants, and immigration policies designed to favor Europeans.

Over time, this taught us—quietly and effectively-what a “real” U.S. citizen is supported to look and sound like.

That story didn’t disappear. Today, we’re seeing it revived. The Trump administration has centered mass deportation in its political agenda, tried to end birthright citizenship, expanded aggressive immigration enforcement, and embraced language long tied to racial removal and white supremacy. Together, these actions reinforce an old message: belonging is still measured through whiteness.

For many white folks, race may feel invisible. We’re rarely asked to think about it. So when a white person asks Where are you from?, they may not realize what they’re echoing—or how that question lands on someone whose body has always been questioned.

But this is about whiteness. It always has been. Many of us might have been taught not to see it that way. The work now is to tell the truth, keep telling the truth, take apart what made and upholds the lies of whiteness, and create something different.